Ambient music radio program on Radio Spiral and LiveStream. Hosted by Rebekkah Hilgraves, Saturdays from 1-4pm Pacific Time/US.

February 1, 2014August 16, 2015

Swytch ON and Lucette Bourdin Tribute

The second half of the program features music of Lucette Bourdin, who would be 60 years old this month. An amazing and prolific painter and ambient artist, Lucette conceived music as painting and painting as music.

The late Lucette Bourdin was a visual and music artist who was a native of France, having grown up in the villages and towns near the Doubs River in the eastern part of the country. The childhood phase of scribbling and coloring never ended for Lucette nor could several years of law school diminish her desire to become an artist. So, when she married an American and moved to the United States she felt her life was going to start over and her art would begin. Always an independent and self-disciplined individual, and feeling that the art programs available would only limit her expression, Lucette embarked upon a rigorous study of artists, color and design which eventually resulted in her own unique style.

Using watercolor/gouache as her media, Lucette developed a painting style which both expresses and evokes the subtlety of the soul. The outer landscape is a metaphor for the spirit that seeks expression as the light of transformation and redemption.

As accomplished at visual art as she was, Lucette was also a master of the ambient music genre, producing a wide ranging collection of albums that can only be described as masterworks. Lucette saw an interesting duality between the two forms of art, where the practice of one reinforces the practice of the other.

Lucette once said:

“The closest analogy to how I experience both the act of painting and a finished work of art is music. While I am painting I feel like music is streaming through me on to the paper. It is difficult to say whether I am playing the music or the instrument being played. My experience is the reverse of music however, because the performance is done privately in my studio while the completed score in its entirety is what I show the public. There is another interesting distinction between the two mediums for me as well. Music is played in a line, it is linear, but it creates an atmosphere that continues after it has been played. A painting is a whole piece of music sounding all at once and which the viewer replays by looking at it. As the eye wanders around a painting the colors, forms, textures and their relationships are “sounding” within the viewer creating an experience or mood or atmosphere.”

Lucette passed away in February of 2011, but her unique perspective on music and art lives on.

Rest’ in pace, Madame Lucette. You are immortal through your music and your art.